Painting Hair – a tutorial by AlienSlof.

[AlienSlof]

I've never written a tutorial before, so if this reads like gibberish, that'll be my overwhelming noobishness showing! If a point needs clarifying, please ask, as it's entirely possible that I've missed something out or not made it clear enough. I find it difficult to write out something I tend to do almost on auto-pilot.

 

I'll assume that most folks reading this know their way around Photoshop or whatever other image editing program they use. None of these techniques are program specific.

 

I rendered a fellow up without hair specially for this – it doubles as a pic I wanted to do anyway of an existing character. I find it easier to render in layers and separate out the background if I'm using a scene, especially if I'm going to paint the hair rather than render it. This one was going onto a game screenshot, so I rendered onto white.

 

The only absolute must in this case is a graphics tablet – to get a free-flowing look to hair, it simply can't be done with a mouse. I find it impossible, anyway! The pen needs to be set for varying pressure so that the hairs taper to a natural point.

 

The good thing about adding hair on a render, is that I know where all the lights are and what colour they are, because I set them up in the first place. It helps to fix in my mind where the colours and highlights need to be. (I have been known to forget this in entirely hand-painted works!)

 

Once I had my rendered man cut out an into a separate layer, I created a new layer underneath him. This is for hair going behind the figure and means I don't have to cut short a pen-stroke.

 

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/hairtut2.jpg

 

Using the airbrush tool, I roughly plotted out the hair, where I wanted it to appear blown as if in a breeze. This allows me to get a good idea of how it will look in the finished image as well as giving me a soft edge. I almost always start with the darkest colour here, then build up the hair on top of it.

 

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/hairtut3.jpg

 

Same principle again, only with a new layer on top, for the main part of the hair. Work is done in both layers from here on. Once it is all in place, it's time to add the fine hairs.

 

For these, I used a soft brush tool (not airbrush) with opacity set to 100 for better coverage at this stage. Now that I had a guide, I could add in the hair proper.

 

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/hairtut4.jpg

 

Where hair is likely to be backlit, such as when it's outlined against sky, I add a little colour to the ends of the hairs and along the edge where there will be loose hairs. In this case the background has a greenish tint, so I used a darker dull green. I find it adds a bit more life to the finished hair by giving the impression of light shining through it where it's thin. I didn't try to be ultra-neat here, as the hair was to look slightly wind-blown, so the odd whisker going astray is wanted.

 

Now it should start to look like hair and less like a black blob. I added another new layer on top of the whole stack – this was going to have the colour added. Back to the airbrush again, to give some softness to the highlights, bearing in mind that this particular character has soft, silky hair.

 

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/hairtut5.jpg

 

Again, this allows me to plot out where I need to add colour. I added more green at the back where there would be some refracted light, and added blue to give the hair a deep blue-black shine. At this point, the colour of the light shining onto the figure has to be kept in mind, and the highlights should not clash.

 

Once this is done, it's back to the small opaque brush again. This pic shows the brush size I was using (the tiny circle in the left) – the smaller it is, the more realistic the hair, but also the more tedious!

 

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/hairtut6.jpg

 

I added more black to break up the blocks of colour and blend it in with the rest of the hair. I then did the same with lighter highlights. By doing this onto a new layer, it allows for reducing opacity if a more subtle effect is desired. The whole deal with hair is the layering of colour and brush lines to get a full effect. At this point, the main work on it was done.

 

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/hairtut7.jpg

 

Adding in the background made the green in his hair make more sense. His colouring resembles the colouring of my original in-game character.

 

Because it's a slightly moody portrait, I added a softening layer over the whole thing – this was made up of copies of each of the previous layers, then merged (just the copies, not all), a blur added then opacity reduced. This gives a softening touch to the hair as well.

 

http://www.slofslair.co.uk/content/art/hairtut1.jpg

 

This technique works with all types and colours of hair, though shorter, or curly strokes would be done in a tighter way.

[LHammonds]

Thanks. This is great info. Hair has always confounded me and I tended to stay away from it.

[AliasTheory]

This is an excellent tutorial. Unfortunately, I lack any sort of tablet...and never have owned one. The results look quite impressive.

[Unlimitedrevolver]

http://www.slofshive.co.uk/content/art/hairtut2.jpg

http://www.slofshive.co.uk/content/art/hairtut3.jpg

http://www.slofshive.co.uk/content/art/hairtut4.jpg

http://www.slofshive.co.uk/content/art/hairtut5.jpg

http://www.slofshive.co.uk/content/art/hairtut6.jpg

http://www.slofshive.co.uk/content/art/hairtut7.jpg

http://www.slofshive.co.uk/content/art/hairtut1.jpg

The site for these pictures seems to be gone.

Is there an updated tutorial with these pictures in it?

I hope someone can direct me to the pictures originally provided in this tutorial.

Sorry for reviving an older topic. :(

[LHammonds]

:ohdear: Dang...and this was an awesome tutorial too. Hopefully she still has them somewhere. ** crosses fingers **

[Unlimitedrevolver]

:ohdear: Dang...and this was an awesome tutorial too. Hopefully she still has them somewhere. ** crosses fingers **

Yeah, it would be great if this could have some pictures. :confused:

[Xenius]

Copy the urls of the images, replace "hive" with "lair" and they will work fine.

[LHammonds]

That worked. Thanks!